I've covered the Skype outage to death, so I'm going to pass the ball to Rich for his perspective. Rich Tehrani just posted an excellent overview of the Skype outage and the lessons learned. He discusses backup strategies and that you should stay informed on IP communications by reading leading VoIP bloggers such as Om Malik, Andy Abramson, and myself. While I think Rich excluded some other excellent VoIP bloggers from his list, don't take offense - he's busy preparing for ITEXPO, which is just a few short weeks away. He probably got tired of hyperlinking. I know I get lazy myself sometimes.